Blog

Last week, Times Higher Education shared provocative findings from a recent report that suggested that libraries have “little to offer” the next generation of academics. According to the key findings of the report, funded by the Publishing Research Consortium, libraries appear to have “lost all visibility” with early career researchers, in part because many “have not visited the library for years.” These conclusions were based on interviews with 116 junior…

Blog

Earlier this year we partnered with Jisc and Research Libraries UK (RLUK) for the second cycle of the UK Survey of Academics to understand the research and teaching attitudes and practices of academics in the UK higher education sector. Key findings from this snapshot of national findings included: A substantial increase in the of respondents that preserves their research data in a repository and a corresponding decrease in the share…

Blog

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Jisc/CNI conference in Oxford, England, and share findings from our recent studies of academics in the US and in the UK. The conference focused on current issues and innovations in digital scholarship and allowed for international exchange on leading practices and policies. A number of themes emerged within and across the various sessions I attended. Open data Many speakers and attendees…

Blog

What makes the 2015 Ithaka S+R Jisc RLUK survey of UK academics so interesting is its timing. The last survey was 2012, the year of the Finch report on open access. The latest survey took place in 2015, the year the Higher Education Funding Council of England (Hefce) published its policy linking open access to the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). To some extent the results tell us what we…

Blog

Today, Ithaka S+R is releasing the UK Survey of Academics, with our partners Jisc and RLUK. Fielded in autumn 2015, this is the second cycle of this project and therefore the first opportunity to examine trends over time. It uses a large-scale sample of academics from across the UK higher education sector. In addition, nearly a dozen individual institutions partnered with us to provide targeted help to ensure that our…

Publication

Research is changing. New technology brings increased computational power and virtual representation of physical objects, allowing us to pose and answer previously unimaginable research questions. Big data can be mixed, linked and mined to reveal new unsuspected connections. Enhanced connectivity allows us to collaborate beyond traditional geographic and disciplinary boundaries. Funders demand greater demonstration of impact and engagement with non-academic …

Event

Please join Deanna Marcum, Roger Schonfeld, Christine Wolff, and Kimberly Lutz at Ithaka S+R’s participant meeting at ALA Midwinter on Sunday, January 10 from 1:30-3:00 pm, in the Seaport C Room at the Seaport Hotel. At the meeting, we will share several updates, including Findings from our recent and ongoing research projects. We have been pursuing an active research agenda and would like to share what we have learned to…

Publication

The UK Survey of Academics 2012, conducted by Ithaka S+R, Jisc, and Research Libraries UK (RLUK), examines the attitudes and behaviours of academics at higher education institutions across the United Kingdom. Our objective is to provide the entire sector, including universities, learned societies, scholarly publishers, and especially academic libraries, with timely findings and analysis that help them plan for the future.…

Blog

Ithaka S+R’s surveys program is growing. Nearly 60 colleges and universities have fielded our student and faculty surveys with their own campus community, with questionnaires that are developed and tested in partnership with the academic library community. This fall, we will be fielding the next cycles of the US Faculty Survey and, in collaboration with Jisc and RLUK, the UK Survey of Academics, with findings due to be released in…

Blog

In 2012, Ithaka S+R partnered with Jisc and Research Libraries UK to conduct the inaugural UK Survey of Academics. The report of findings was published in May 2013, and it is freely available on our website. This project was the first in several steps to internationalize Ithaka S+R’s US Faculty Survey. It developed rich findings for the UK higher education sector about discovery, open access, the print to electronic transition,…

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Ithaka S+R is a not-for-profit service that helps the academic and cultural communities serve the public good and navigate economic, technological, and demographic change. We deliver strategic guidance, research, and publications through two program areas: Educational Transformation and Libraries & Scholarly Communication.